Novelist Ivy Pochoda on a Wild Trip to Louisiana

A tour of antebellum homes in the South involved late nights, live Zydeco and dinner with a tartan-clad heiress

By

Ivy Pochoda

Sept. 27, 2013 3:01 p.m. ET

LAST WINTER, my mother, editor of the Magazine Antiques, asked me to join her for a visit to antebellum homes in and around New Iberia, Breaux Bridge and Lafayette, La. We'd be traveling with the curator of a prominent museum in North Carolina; a renowned dealer of Southern painting, Audubon prints and Federal furniture; and two of the latter's young acolytes, who had organized the trip.

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Illustration by Elizabeth Graeber for The Wall Street Journal

I was wary of this proposition. When I hear "Chippendale," I childishly think of oily men with rock-hard abs and lamé thongs. I find tours of historic homes to be a special sort of torture. Plus, our companions didn't sound terribly exciting—I imagined a bunch of fusty old coots with magnifying glasses and early bedtimes. But my mother was adamant that I take part.

Over the years, I'd accompanied my mother on several decadent work trips: to research pastries in Paris, wine in Provence and seafood in Marseille when she worked for a magazine with a lavish travel budget. Together we'd witnessed innumerable instances of editors behaving badly—usually brought on by a surfeit of free wine and aperitifs—stealing ashtrays from Michelin-starred restaurants, sneaking their dogs into high-end hotels, crawling around in the host's garden to swipe lemon verbena for a midnight tisane. My mother, by nature both professional and polite, had always remained at a remove from the mayhem. Despite my desire on these occasions to sample just one more glass of Domaine du Vieux Télégraphe (and then perhaps another), I'd always refrained.

This time, it didn't take me long to discover that I was the squarest of the crew—and, even more surprising, that my mother was keeping pace with the rest of them. Normally my mother is discriminating when it comes to wine, but when the good-ish stuff ran dry, she embraced the spirit of our companions and reached for the swill while I sat worrying about the next day's headache.

‘I have no patience for anything 'ye olde' and I fear people in historic dress’

The morning after a booze-soaked meal at the art dealer's soulful house near the Irish Channel in New Orleans, we piled into a Ford Expedition, drinks already in hand, and headed toward swamp country. The first stop had been kept secret from my mother and me. As we turned off a dirt road with ramshackle houses on one side and murky water on the other, a six-story, medieval-style turret popped out of the woods like something from a Southern fairy tale. It was protected by a moat patrolled by an alligator, and owned by a man who dressed like the Count of Monte Cristo—cape and all. After admiring his fussy Louis XV furniture and faux-marble detailing, we headed into town, where we drank more at lunch than I usually do at dinner; visited the Shadows-on-the-Teche, a 19th-century plantation home; closed down more than one bar in New Iberia; and kept the other guests in our B&B awake until 3 a.m. Several times that evening I tried to catch my mother's eye, wondering when she'd signal that we'd had enough, that this party was best carried on by the others. But she never did.

Our daily itineraries might sound conventionally touristy—garden visits, guided tours, slide shows, gift shops—yet they yielded wild surprises. A trip to the Joseph Jefferson Mansion in New Iberia turned into an after-hours tour of the Tabasco plant on Avery Island, followed by an impromptu cocktail party in one of the island's secluded mansions with a hot-sauce heiress dressed in full tartan. A dinner in an Acadian homestead was an epic feast of 100 pounds of barbecued oysters, boudin blanc, pork rinds and gumbo. One of the region's best fiddlers played for our party of six by candlelight.

You see, our traveling companions viewed these houses not as historic objects, but as living things they could invest with their own immeasurable vitality.

By the final day of our journey I was tired, a little hung over and overstuffed with gumbo, oysters and boudin. And I was afraid my mother was flagging. Our last stop was Vermilionville, a re-creation of an 18th- and 19th-century Louisiana village. The brochure at the ticket office promised artisans in traditional dress demonstrating how Acadians—French-speaking settlers from Canada, whose descendants are called Cajuns—made rope from Spanish moss, crafted dolls from cornhusks and wove pine-needle baskets.

I have no patience for anything that smacks of "ye olde" and both pity and fear people in historic dress. It quickly became apparent that I wasn't alone in my reluctance to embrace Vermilionville. Our group headed straight for the restaurant, La Cuisine de Maman, and even though it was still morning, ordered a round of drinks. To my surprise, the food at the steam table buffet was remarkable—the gumbo and biscuits held their own, and the wine was significantly better than plonk. Sated and slightly tipsy, we entered the village.

Before we saw a single house we were lured into a dance hall by the sound of live Zydeco. Inside we found a group of locals cutting loose to a seven-piece band and drinking margaritas and beer. It might be tempting to chalk up my subsequent enjoyment of Vermilionville to the food, booze and music. But in the cottages and houses, there was no sense of the stagnant nor the twee.

On the way back to New Orleans we pulled off in the swamp town of Des Allemands, which we were told had the best catfish in Louisiana.

Unable to find a single restaurant—or business, for that matter—we asked directions from a man who was busy scratching his back with a rusty ax. He pointed us toward a place that suggested Red Lobster. I sensed my luck had run out, but the catfish was stellar. My companions were taking it all in stride—acting as if we'd always meant to end our trip at this highway fish joint.

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Ivy Pochoda

I knew then why my mother had been so insistent that I accompany her. Aside from showing me that she can party with the big boys, she needed me to bear witness to the delightful insanity, because I certainly wouldn't have believed her if she'd told me about it later.

—Ms. Pochoda's second novel, "Visitation Street," was published in July.

I have no idea why this was published. Sounds like they are on a road to DUIs. Is this supposed to be a young person's view of drinking and eating fish? Is this a young person? Does she like Red Lobster?

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